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Henry Whitfield House 




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GUILFORD, CONNECTICUT 
U. S, A. 



SECOND EDITION 
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NOTE 

The first issue of the following; sketch, {prepared 
tn lQ02)being exhausted, a second edition, with some 
necessary changes, has been authorized by the Trustees. 

W. G. Andrews 
November, IQ08 



P. S. Ho7i. S. H. Chittenden died at Wash- 
ington, D. C, February 1 4, IQOQ. Ex-Governor 
R. S. Woodruff, a former trustee, has been appointed 
trustee in his place. 

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IHenri^ XlXUbitfielb IHouse. 

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(•^ip-HIS house, known in Giiilford as "The Old Stone House," was 
^ built by Henry Whitfield, the first minister of the town, in 1639 
^"^ or 1640 Permanent buildings cannot have been commenced, as 
a rule, before the middle of October, 1639, and therefore were not com- 
menced, probably, vmtil the following spring But as the Stone House 
was to serve as a fort it is possible that the foundations were laid be- 
fore the beginning of September, and the traditional date of erection, 
1639, may be correct at least as respects the north end. 

It was somewhat smaller than at present, but no doubt had three 
projecting chimneys. According to tradition the front part consisted 
of one room, of the fiill bight of the house. Here worship was con- 
ducted until a meeting-house could be built, while folding partitions, 
like Venetian blinds, divided the apartment when it was not needed for 
public use>* This would have left but three rooms for Mr. Whitfield's 
family, which apparently included nine children, besides the servants. 
But not long before this period the older daughters even of country 
squires in England slept in the same room with the maids, and the 
older sons in the common "hall" with the serving men. By the help of 
the movable partitions the household could have been disposed of at 
night, even if there were not, as seems on the whok^ most probable, a 
garret over the great front room. The history of the house, for two 
hundred years, is not very well known. We have the views of an ex- 
pert in "Early Connecticut Houses, " by Messrs. Isham and Brown, 
architects, (1900). It is there suggested that about the beginning of the 
18th century the front part was divided by floors and partitions; 
that later in the centm-y the south chimney was taken down to 
make room for windows; and that not far from the close of the 
colonial period the house, which had been neglected, was "hand- 
somely repaired." But after a wiiile it began to be suspected 
that the south wall had been weakened by the removal of the chim- 
ney, while leakage from the roof, which by this time was certainly 
in a bad way, may easily have injured the other walls. But perhaps 



the most serious evil was the dampness due to the absence of space foi" 
air between the walls and wainscot. At length a wooden building was 
drawn to the premises for a dwelling house and the old home of the 
Whitfields became practically a barn. If it were to be lived in import- 
ant changes were indispensable, and these were undertaken in 1868, 
but with the purpose of preserving as much as possible of the original 
building. In the interior the constructions of Whitfield's day, (except 
the curious timber- work of the roof, now necessarially removed) had 




[Supposed appearance of exterior in 1640: approximate.] 
almost disappeared already. As to the exterior it is probable that most 
of the south wall was taken down and certain that a new south chim- 
ney was build, while the north wall, with its huge old chimney, was 
left to a large extent untouched. It was long generally agreed that 
part, (the most precise testimony was to the effect that at least half) of 
the west wall remains, or most of the northern portion, although the 
whole structure was raised about two feet and a half. It was hoped 



that this point and others would ha settled when the inner plastering 
was removed for changes since made, because the difference between 
the Tuodern mortar and the clay and shell-lime of the ancient builders 
would then be apparent. But when these changes were made in 1903-4, 
the objact sought, that of providing a convenient room for the collec- 
tions, called for little disturbance of the plastering. Conseqiiently 




[Traditional appearance of interior in 1640; a front garret probable] 

there were few discoveries, though it became somewhat probable that 
less of the original west wall remained than had been supposed. But 
the little that was uncovered of the short east wall seemed old and 
though most of the ell must have been rebuilt in 1868, (when it was 
also lengthened), work comparatively old was found in it near the 



angle which it makes with the front part of the house. Moreover, in 
the reconstractod walls much old material may have been nsed, though 
we do not know how much. The original foundations of at least the 
main building, though made thicker by a sort of a lining, apparently 
remain. In the house as it stands there is certainly a good deal of olcl 
work and probably still more old material. But on various interesting 
points, such as the form of the original living room, we must simply 
accept the testimony of the architect, Mr. Norman M. Isliam of Provi- 
dence, that "as regards the great questions of the house the alterations 
have no real evidence to offer." 

C 

The history of the owners belongs to that of the house . The first, 
Henry Whitfield, (or Whitfeild, as he wrote it,) was a good example of 
the class of gentlemen and scholars which furnished the emigrant 
Puritans with many of their leaders He came of an old land-owning 
family, and was possibly a collateral descendant of Chaucer. He w as a 
graduate of Oxford, and had been for about twenty years rector of 
Ockley in Surrey. A book of his, "Some Helpes to Stirre up to Chris- 
tian Duties, " had reached a second edition before he came to New- 
England. After his return he wrote, or compiled, accounts of Indian 
missions, a subject in which religious Englishmen of all parties were 
interested. A "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New Eng- 
land" had lately been incorporated (1649; and for many years supported 
John Eliot's work. This society undoubtedly owed something to 
Whitfield's efforts, and it has, as \ve shall see, other associations with 
the Whitfield House. He married Dorothy Sheaft'e of Cranbrook in 
Kent, the daughter of a clergyman, and descended collaterally from 
Archbishop Grindal and first cousin of the poets Giles and Phineas 
Fletcher. The Sheaffes had been successful clothiers, and manu- 
facturers of cloth had long before become founders of great fami- 
lies in Kent. Even then an industrial as well as a military career 
might be the path to high social po.sition in England, and such a stock 
was well suited for transplantation to industrial Connecticut. Dorothy, 
eldest daughter of these parents, married Samuel Desborough, the 
first magistrate of Guilford, whom Cromwell afterward made Keeper 
of the Great Seal of Scotland. Sarah married John Higginson, and 
Abigail, James Fitch, two New England ministers, and through them 
many Americans are descendants of the first pastor of Guilford. 

C 
Mr. Whitfield suffered both in health and fortune by his emigration, 
He went home in 1650 and offered his house and lands "to the town at a 
low price. The town was too poor to bay them and Mrs. Whitfield and 



her son, Nathaniel, remained here to look after the property. In 1654 
there was soma talk of a purchaser, conspicuous among leaders as 
gently born, as rich, and, what was better, as manly as himself, for the 
fine courtesy then acquired chiefly at courts, which has since become 
the distinctive mark of a gentleman, and to which democracy is in 
some respects more favorable than monarchy— the younger John Win- 
throp. In 1657 WJiitfleld died, leaving his whole estate to his wife, the 
first of several female owners In May, 1659, the town seems to have 
felt itself rich enough to buy the house, though probably not the land, 
for the house was then offered to the New Haven Jurisdiction for a 
grammar school. The offer was made by the town's deputies, one of 




[Appearance of exterior in 1902] 
them being Mrs. Whitfield's kinsman by affinity, William Chittenden, 
and by the Deputy Governor of the colony, William Leete, also a 
Guilford man. The latter, afterwards Governor of New Haven, 
and later of Connecticut, when that had absorbed New Haven, like- 
wise served as one of the Commissioners of the United Colonies of 
New England. In this capacity lie took part in distributing the gifts of 
the missionary society mentioned above. His chair, of the ancient 
"wainscot" pattern, is one of the treasures of the Museum. The town's 
offer was not accepted, and in September, 1659, Nathaniel Whitfield, 
now in England, sold the whole property to Major Robert Thompson of 
London, merchant. 



♦ll^OBERT THOMPSON, (styled also "armiger, " that is, one entitled 
n\ <^o a coat of arms, ) was the youngest of five brothers, all of 
" ^whom except himself had lived in Virginia, where there was a 
larger Puritan (not necessarily a nonconformist) element than is some- 
times supposed. This family, one member of which was raised to the 
peerage, furnishes one of the countless examples of social eminence at- 
tained in England through trade. Near the close of his life Major 
Thompson succeeded the illustrious Robert Boyle as head of the 
missionary society, or "company," just spoken of for the second time. 
Though it had been established by Puritans it was an organ of English 
Christianity as a whole, and Boyle, an Episcopalian, had aided in sav- 
ing it from ruin when the Puritans w^ere driven from power. When he 
died (1691) the English Revolution had made it easy for nonconformists 
to take the principal oversight of what was in a manner their own in- 
stitution, and Thompson's appointment as "governor" followed. The 
connection of the family with the society did not cease with him. 
His son-in-law, Sir William Ashurst, was the next governor and it 
would seem that one or more of his lineal descendants, like him owners 
of the Stone House, held high office in the organization during the 18th 
century. It still exists under the name of "The New" England Com- 
pany, " being jirobably the oldest of Protestant missionary societies, 
find now seeks to promote Christianity among the Indians of British 
North America. It is apparently still administered in its old unsecta- 
rian spirit, though doing most of its work through ministers of the 
Church of England. Its early history supplies striking instance of re- 
ligious sympathy in the midst of strong theological and ecclesiastical 
antipathies. Of this sympathy one may fairly regard the Whitfield 
House as a kind of monument. In the Museum is a vohime of recently 
f)ublished letters from the archives of the New England Company, the 
gift of its governor. 

C 
Major Thompson died in 1694 and loft the income of his Guilford 
property to his wife. Dame Frances, who became to that extent its 
second mistress. But as far as local records show" the title remained 
with male descendants, Joseph, W^illiam and Robert, and the family 
held it for more than a century. It was part of entailed estate, and its 
American occupants were tenants of absentee landlords. And when it 
was alienated a fictitious lawsuit in New Haven was necessary to break 
the entail. All this gives a certain old world asj^ect to the story of the 
house in the colonial period. On the 21st of October, 1772, it was sold, 
with the land, by Robert Thompson "of Elsham in Lincolnshire in 
Great Brittain, Esq'r. ' ' to Wyllys Eliot of Guilford. 

C. 
The new owner was a great-grandson of the Apostle of the Indians, 



and his grandfather, Joseph Eliot, the third pastor of Guilford, had in 
early life received jDayment for services as a teacher from the English 
Society so often mentioned. He was also a descendant of the colonial 
governors, Leete, Wyllys and Haynes, and, it is said, throvigh the 
second wife of the last, Mabel Harlalienden, of various lines of kings. 
He probably vakied more his descent from the yeoman's son, John 
Eliot. But, though retaining most of the land, he owned the house 
less than a fortnight. It was bought November 6, 1772, by Joseph 
Pynchon. 

Mr. Pynchon, fourth son of "the Honorable Col. William Pynchon," 
was, after the Whitflelds, the first and last owner who lived in the 
house, using it, we are told, as a summer residence, and probably 
maintaining in it the simple dignity of the early New England patri- 
cians. He was a loyalist and became a refugee, and it is with singular 
fitness that a dwelling built by an Eaglishman, and so long part of an 
English estate, is found at the very close of the colonial period the home 
of a man who would not renounce the King. He sold the house, in 
which the deed, now in the Museum, describes him as dwelling, June 
27, 1776, just a week before the Declaration of Indej)endence. 

C 

And with singular fitness, and as if to mark by the sharpest line 
the transition from the old order to the new, the first occupant under 
the sovereignty of the people w^as a patriot refugee from Long Island, 
Samuel Griffing, w^ho came over in September and found shelter in the 
Stone House. He was, however, not its owner ; it had been bought by 
his youngest brother, Jasper, whose descendants held it until 1900. 
Jasi^er Griffing w^as born on Long Island, at Southold, which has given 
several valuable families to Guilford. After an adventurous career else- 
where, he made his fortune in Guilford, became a very important 
member of this community and died at the close of the century, Novem- 
ber 1, 1800. 

C 

The property now passed to Jasper Griffing 's son, Nathaniel, whose 
portrait hang& on the walls of the Museum. He was a shipowner, a 
magistrate, and long the foremost man of tke town. At his death, 
September 17, 1845, his son, Frederick Redfield Griffing, inherited the 
Stone House farm. He was a very active man of business, prominent 
in large enterprises carried on far beyond the limits of his native town. 
He has an honorable place among the "captains of industry" whom 
Connecticut furnished in such numbers to our vast industrial armies 



- 8 

during the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth century few such 
captains had been needed here, and her most eminent citizens served in 
the ranks. Mr. Griffing died prematurely, October 13, 1852, in New 
York, while on his way to the coal fields in Pennsylvania in the interest 
of a projected railroad. 

C 

He was unmarried, and left most of his estate, inckiding the 
Whitfield House, to his mother by will. Mrs. Sarah (Brown) 
Griffing, one of the wealthiest women in C'onnecticat, renewed the 
female ownership begun by Mistress Whitfield, partly resumed by 
Dame Frances Thompson, and henceforth continvious. She w^as the 
daughter of Samuel Brown, one of the "optimates" of Guilford at the 
Revolutionary period. Her gift to the town of the Guilford Institute (now 
combined with the town High School) in 1854, recalls the connection, 
whatever it was, of the first woman who owned the Stone House with 
the public-spirited offer of that for a grammar school nearly two hun- 
dred years before. Mrs. Griffing died June 1, 1865; two days later she 
would have completed her ninety-eighth year. She was succeeded by 
her only surviving child. Mary, the wife of Henry Ward Chittenden. 
He was descendant of the Guilford deputy who took part in com- 
municating the offer just referred to, and bore a characteristic Guilford 
name with honor to his family and birthpUce. 



Mrs Chittenden made a generous use of her large inheritance, 
giving freely to all good causes. The important repairs of 1868 were 
made after the house caine into her possession, though made under the 
direction of her son-in-law, Mr Henry D. Cone. She died March 21, 
1878, leaving one child, Sarah Brown, the wife of Mr. Cone. Though 
Mrs. Cone had removed to Stockbridge in Massachusetts she took a 
deep interest in the Whitfield property, and it was her purpose, which 
circumstances put it out of her power to carry into effect, to give the 
house to the town of Guilford. She is in some degree a representative of 
the Whitfield family through her descent from the wife of William 
Chittenden, probably Mrs. Whitfield's cousin. And it is an interesting 
fact that among the eleven persons now entrusted in different capacities 
with the care of the house there are lineal descendants of its first owner 
and at least five of his associates, while a sixth has i^robably a collateral 
descendant among them. 

On the 28 of September, 1900, the Whitfield House, with about 
eight acres of land, became the property of the State of Connecticut. The 
price paid ($8,500) included $3,500 from the State, $3, 000 from the town 
of Guilford, between $500 and $1,000 from residents of Guilford, and as 



— = 10 - 

iiuich from members of tbe Connecticut Society of the Colonial Dames 
of America. Individuals interested in various ways contributed the 
rest, Tbe State has since generally appropriated |2,000 bienially for 
"support and maintenance. " and one or two hundred, dollars has been 
obtained from gifts and sales. It will be observ^ed that what has been 
accomplished would have been impossible without individual contri- 
butions and these must continue to be needed. The property is held by 
nine trustees, legally known as ' 'The Trustees of the Henry Whitfield 
House. " Their chief function is to establish and maintain in the build- 
ing a State Historical Museum, and it is desired to make the institution 
embody in various forms the history of this commonwealth and the 
story of its people. 

c 

To fit the house for its new uses the long high room of Whit- 
field's time has been reproduced with something of the appearance 
which Whitfield could, had he wished, have given it. This in- 
volved the loss of nothing which remains of that period, in material or ar- 
rangement, and while providing a convenient place for the principal 
collections the apartment is itself an attractive and instructive part of 
the exhibition. More that two-thirds of the cost was met by the Colonial 
Dames. It having been found impossible to make the changes imme- 
diately the collections were virtually begun, after various unavoida- 
ble delays, June 7, 1902, though four articles had been deposited in 
May. On the sixth of October the whole number, comprising gifts and 
loans, was two hundred and forty-one. Now, (Nov. 9, 1908) 653 de- 
posits have been entered and 640 are in the Museum. A number of 
loans have been withdrawn and two or three articles have disappeared. 

c 

On the first of November, 1908, 10,731 visitors 'names had been reg- 
istered, and many had failed to enter their names. The collection is con- 
sidered a very interesting one already. The flax industry, for ex- 
ample, once pursued in all its stages on almost every farm, has a nearly 
comjjlete illustration. And from the industries of Connecticut, which 
for generations more or less engaged its inhabitants, with rare excep- 
tions, in manual labor, can be gathered illustrations of a large part 
of their exterior life. We are expressly told of Mr. Wliitfield that he 
was never obliged to labor with his hands, but other emigrants of his 
class were, and their children commonly were. Such sources of large 
wealth as existed elsewhere were seldom accessible here and a wonder- 
ful equality of condition became a chief distinction of the common- 
wealth, while the blood of gentle and simple more and more frequently 



12 ~ 

flowed in the same veins. This l)y no means involved the disappear- 
ance of everything beautifnl and stately, and it even fostered the 
growth of a very genuine and extremely valuable aristocracy. But 
plain, very seldom bad, manners and a graceful, even courtly, bearing, 
might botii be seen among men and women closely akin. The Museum 
has to exhibit all aspects of these jjerhai^s unique conditions, and there 
is ample material for doing it. 

c 

The official representatives of the State are entitled to help in pro- 
moting this end. The ways of helping them are obvious and numerous,' 
and it is to be hoiked that all will be employed. And it should not be 
forgotten that one way is to visit the Museum. 



Trustees of Henry Whitfield House 



Frederick Calvin Norton, Bristol, 
President. 

Hon, Samuel H. Chittenden, East River, 
Secretary and Acting Treasurer. 

Calvin M. Leete, Leete's Island, Guilford, 
Ex-officio (First Selectman.) 

Mrs. Godfrey Dunscombe, New Haven. 

Mrs. Frank W. Cheney, South Manchester. 

Rev. Frederick E. Snow, Guilford. 

George Dudley Seymour, New Haven. 

Edward C. Seward, Guilford and New York, 

Rev. William G. Andrews, D. D., Guilford, 

Curators : 
Mr. and Mrs. Harry F. Griswold. 



ADDENDA 

On Page 11 beneath the illustration of the interior read "South'" 
for ' 'East" as printed in the descriptive line. 



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